I have gotten quite the response from my humorous experience at the food store getting the required card for the soccer card thingys...so I thought I would share my newest experience and success...baking brownies!
First off, I have to admit that I just may have the absolute best recipe for brownies (Jennie, I know you still think you do, but we have yet to have our bake-off...so for now I will assume bragging rights;). I know what most of you are thinking...why bake brownies from scratch when there are perfectly good boxed brownie mixes...obviously you have yet to taste these brownies! However, they do not have boxed brownie mixes here...nor cake mixes, at least that I recognize. I got this recipe from a roommate in college (being from NJ I thought she was crazy to spend the time and energy making them from scratch...at least until I tasted them)...
On to the adventure...I had no idea how many steps we just take for granted when baking. I was a good girl and copied several of our favorite recipes and brought them with us...I figured, hey this is from scratch...they HAVE to have these ingredients...it has taken me a month of looking in every grocery store (and that is alot) and a friend that had pity on me and just gave me some of them! Here is the recipe...
*Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees (convert oven temp to Celcius...180 degrees and figure out which of the 8 oven settings is the correct one...still not too sure about that) If anyone can clue me into these settings, please don't hold back...Number 4 and 5 look like broil to me...but I can be wrong...
*I don't have any measuring cups or spoons...which is okay because they would be in metric anyway! Cream together 1 cup margarine (butter/burro), 1 cup sugar/zucchero, and 1 cup brown sugar/zucchero di canna...which I am still not sure if it is the right stuff, but it looked alright. Sounds good so far...I don't have a microwave to 'soften' the butter and I don't have a mixer of any kind to 'cream' it together...I found my hands did the best job for this ;)
*Add 2 eggs/uovo and beat...mix well with spoon.
*Add and stir in 1/4 cup evaporated milk/doesn't exist as far as I know so I used just regular milk, 1/2 cup cocoa/cocao amaro in polvere, 1/4 tsp salt/sale, 1 tsp vanilla/vaniglia which I couldn't find so my friend had pity on me but I have since seen it in a store, and 1/2 tsp baking powder/lievito in polvere which again my friend had to clue me in for.
*Stir in 1 3/4 cups flour/farina and then beat for 30 seconds...mix well with spoon.
*Pour in greased 9x13 pan...doesn't exist here because everything is in metric, but did the best I could.
*Bake 45 minutes (or in my case only 20 minutes because I think I had it on the convection oven setting).
So the batter tasted about right, it smelled about right while cooking, and looks about what it is to look like...
So I had another success! Today was a good day! Things just seemed to work out all over the place. The weather is just wonderful...sunny and a light breeze...downright pleasant. I managed to wash the sheets off my bed (this is kind of tricky because I only have one set and no dryer) and they are even dried and on my bed. I went to the friendly bread store and found what I think will be a fun 'school' on the beach for the summer months for the kids...I have been looking for something for them to do with other kids in order to make friends. We got mail from home. And my brownies look like brownies, smell like brownies, and hopefully taste like brownies (we are patiently waiting for them to cool down).
So I hope that you have a wonderful day full of successes!
Ciao a tutti!
Thank you for remembering! When we bake off we need an judge that will judge fairly. I enjoy your blog each and every time.
ReplyDelete~Jennie